Light rail, bus or monorail? Tell it to Sound Transit

The agency will take public comments in series of meetings

By JANE HADLEY, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Sunday, January 9, 2005

As Sound Transit's proposed Seattle light rail system teetered between being and nothingness in Congress in 2003, supporters of bus transit and the monorail pounded away on why one or the other of those modes was superior.

Light rail carried the day, but with Sound Transit launching a long-range study of how to expand its bus and rail system over the next 25 years, the advocates of bus rapid transit and the monorail now have a new opportunity to promote their favored transit solutions.

The first of 10 public meetings around the region this month on Sound Transit's long-range plan is tonight in Seattle.

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Although Sound Transit is set on using light rail to go north from Northgate and south from Sea-Tac Airport, it says it has an open mind about which technology to use to get across Interstate 90 to the Eastside and to get to Bothell from Northgate.

It has commissioned a study comparing bus rapid transit, monorail and light rail for those two corridors.

The I-90 corridor runs from the Sodo district across Lake Washington and Mercer Island and then spreads in three directions: one north that would end at Totem Lake in Kirkland, one that would go through downtown Bellevue to Redmond and a third that would end in Issaquah.

The state Route 522 corridor would run from the Northgate Transit Center north along Interstate 5 to North 145th Street and then east to state Route 522, also known as Bothell Way Northeast, ending at the University of Washington's Bothell campus.

All three technologies have experienced some embarrassments.

Las Vegas' 3.9-mile monorail opened six months last year and then had to be shut down for months because a 60-pound wheel, a flange and other parts were falling off moving trains.

The city of Honolulu, rejecting light rail, decided in 2002 to go with a bus rapid-transit system. But the bus system foundered and attracted controversy, the federal government withdrew funding, and the newly elected mayor says he will abandon bus rapid transit and pursue light rail.

Seattle's light rail system, originally planned to be 21 miles long, be completed by 2006 and cost less than $2 billion, is 14 miles long, won't be completed until 2009 and will cost $2.4 billion.

A light rail line in Houston experienced more than 50 accidents in the first nine months of operation, prompting citizens to nickname it "A Street Car Named Disaster" and "Wham Bam Tram."

Ed Stone, a spokesman for Citizens for King County Monorail, says he is not a light rail opponent, but his group wants to make sure that Sound Transit gives monorail "a full and fair evaluation."

A bedrock principle of the group, Stone said, is that any rapid transit system must be "completely grade-separated" and never conflict with traffic. "Rise Above It All" was the slogan of Seattle's winning monorail campaign.

Seattle's light rail line will run partly in a tunnel, partly on the surface and partly elevated. That flexibility is often considered a plus in the light rail column, but Stone said it is no advantage to run on the surface.

Surface transit, while inexpensive, runs more slowly and results in collisions and traffic delays, he said.

If both light rail and monorail can be built elevated, why prefer monorail?

Stone said monorail has a "smaller footprint" and can be built more quickly.

But Sound Transit's planning director, Paul Matsuoka, says the existing monorail doesn't comply with federal standards because it does not include sidewalks that allow stranded passengers to evacuate train. A monorail that met those standards would have a larger footprint.

And Sound Transit is using the same faster construction technology for its light rail as the monorail brags about, of dropping precast pylons into place, he said.

Bus rapid transit attempts to take on some of rail's attractive features by using modern buses and protected or exclusive rights of way. Modest versions of it are express service in high occupancy vehicle lanes. But Scott Rutherford, chairman of the University of Washington's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, says that is not really rapid transit.

They feature stations rather than bus stops, stop infrequently and have passengers pay their fare off the bus so that they can enter more than just one door, minimizing boarding time. Signs tell them how many minutes until the next bus. The whole package has branding and identity.

No city has that whole package of features.

John Niles, technical director of the anti-light rail group Citizens for Effective Transportation Alternatives, argues for the modest version of bus transit. He said he likes it because it it's the cheapest, most efficient and most flexible technology.

"What appeals to me is you can mix buses with high occupancy vehicles wherever you possibly can because it costs less," he said. "Every time you dedicate a pathway to buses, you're not using it efficiently."

His answer is to give buses priority in a high occupancy vehicle lane and then let in, first, van pools and car pools, and then single-occupant vehicles willing to pay to get into the lane.

Buses aren't tied to a fixed guide way as trains are but can leave the highway and go in various directions, Niles said, and rail is too costly and inflexible.

"I always thought Bellevue across Interstate 90 and up to Northgate would be a great light rail line," he said. "There's a huge amount of demand." He had doubts about light rail south out of downtown because "there's not nearly as much demand south."

Rutherford thinks the monorail is a risk, both because it is proprietary technology and because there are so few monorail systems in the United States.

Asked which technology is best for the I-90 corridor, Peter Hurley, executive director of the pro-transit group Transportation Choices Coalition, said: "It may be that one technology makes sense for the spine between Seattle and Bellevue, and a different technology makes sense for the connections to that spine from Issaquah, Renton, Kirkland and Sammamish."

Light rail works best in a high-volume corridor, Hurley said, adding that the Seattle-Bellevue ridership is estimated at 45,000 a day by 2030.

"That's a lot of people, and it may be light rail is best simply because you can carry a lot of people with only a single driver as opposed to (bus rapid transit), where you need a driver for each bus."

Aaron Ostrom, executive director of the environmental group 1000 Friends of Washington, said light rail is best for the I-90 corridor.

"You want to hook it into the existing light rail system we have on the west side of the lake," he said. "It needs to seamlessly directly connect to light rail."

Light rail also does a better job than buses of shaping land use, he said. "It's very important for us to focus growth into our urban centers, and investments in rail transit support that."The high end of bus rapid transit with exclusive rights of way ends up costing almost as much as light rail, he added.

Matsuoka, Sound Transit's planning director, said he reads a lot of e-mail debates arguing that one technology is better, faster, cheaper than another.

"I don't think anything is as simple as that," he said. "I don't care what technology you choose to advocate for. It's all a bunch of trade-offs."